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| Feeding the Multitude by Bernardo Strozzi |
Second Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-11, 15-18
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15
Deus Providebit.
God will provide.
This inscription is found on the
base of the statue of Our Lady that welcomes you to Notre Dame Seminary, where
I went to graduate school. It always struck me because it wasn’t any lengthy
quote - just two words in Latin – and yet those two words brought me comfort
and solace in the most difficult of days that I had while there. In the midst
of it all I had a firm hope and faith that God would in fact provide and can
point to places where He did so, as I pray that each of you can do as well.
As we listen to the scriptures
today we hear some of those ancient stories of how God has provided for His
people. Second Kings and John’s Gospel both provide passages where food was
miraculously multiplied by God, in the Old Testament at the command of Elisha
and in the New Testament by the Lord Jesus. Tying these two stories together is
that beautiful verse from Psalm 145: The
eyes of all look hopefully to you, and you give them their food in due season.
We are reminded that all things come from God and that He will give what we
need, but also we are given a hint that while God gives what we need, what we
need is often not what we expect to receive. The people with Elisha didn’t
believe there was enough food and Andrew points out the loaves and fish almost
as a sign of despair, as if to say it wasn’t even enough for the Lord and the
Twelve alone, much less for thousands of others. And yet, the Lord provided and
even provided a little extra for later. Deus
providebit. God will provide.
Today we begin a five-week period
of hearing and reflecting on John 6, wherein the Lord gives His Bread of Life
Discourse, telling those who hear of what He will provide for His hearers and
for all those who seek to follow Him in the future. As is so often the case,
what the Lord says is a bit shocking, for He tells them that He will provide
for their sustenance nothing other than His own Flesh and Blood. Surely this
was not at all what they were expecting, and yet as we will hear in the coming
weeks, this is indeed what He comes to give and commands us to receive. And
here is one of the major differences between Catholicism and every other
Christian community (excluding the Orthodox, of course).
All Christians agree that we can
and should spend time reading the Sacred Scriptures and allowing the Word of
God to nourish us. So important is it for us Catholics, that we have at four
separate readings from the scriptures every Sunday, the responsorial psalm
included, not to mention that the majority of the prayers in the Mass are
scriptural. But as Catholics, we don’t stop at simply hearing and receiving the
Word of God into our mind and heart. We also receive the Word of God in our
very flesh. All non-Catholic Christian communities honor the scriptures but do
not recognize the Lord in the Eucharist He commanded us to celebrate.
So as we conclude this first of
five weeks of reflections on the gift of the Eucharist and its place in our
lives, it is appropriate to pause and examine ourselves in this regard:
Do I really believe, as the
Church teaches and as the Lord will say over and again in the coming weeks,
that what we receive at Holy Communion is not bread and wine but is truly Christ's Body and Blood?
If so, am I showing that belief in the way that I receive Communion and attend Mass?
If you're struggling with belief, ask yourself why that might be. What is keeping you from total belief in His Presence with us. And then make the words of the man in the Gospels your own: Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.
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